My Pixel Academy

Gamify your classroom with

My Pixel Academy

The quick-start platform for gamifying the curriculum you already teach. You bring the content you know best. We bring the world your students explore. K–12, any subject, and free while we build it.

Welcome your class into a special world. Assignments become quests of discovery. Points unlock rewards that students can use to express themselves. And you get a chance to reward the behavior you want more of in your class — like your stamps, stickers, and stars, on the next level.

See it running

The Academy campus, drawn in pixel art, as the interactive introduction opens on it. Play the introduction

Finally, designing big for kids

Gamification is everywhere today. Most Fortune 500 companies use it, and so does nearly every app in your pocket. It works because it grabs attention, sparks joy, and changes how people approach a challenge.

Classrooms are where those three things matter most. The problem is, no one hires a design team for teachers. We end up competing with the entertainment industry for the same attention, with none of the same resources.

My Pixel Academy exists to close that gap, handing teachers the tools to design big for their kids using the content they already know.

Start where you like

It's how kids learn. It's how we teach.

  1. Tier 1 · Points & Rewards

    Reward Your Values

    Set the values and behaviors you shout out in class: a customizable PBIS system where students see your standards clearly. They earn points, spend them at the Bookshop, furnish a dorm room of their own, and collect Mastery Badges for the milestones you define.

  2. Tier 2 · Setting & Story

    Give a Unit a Story

    Shared campus spaces let you visually map your routines and expectations onto different activities. Immersion and structure arrive in the same move.

  3. Tier 3 · Deep Narrative

    Get Them Practicing at Home

    Major plot events launch projects and exams. Students meet the content with a gamer's persistence: less fear of failure, more willingness to try again.

What your students see

A special campus, by invitation

Students arrive by special invitation to the Academy. Here, they'll learn, play, and express themselves in a class community.

  • The avatar creator: a student's pixel-art character stands in a lit arch while they choose skin tone, hair style, hair colour and headwear from rows of swatches.
    Custom avatars open the door to self-expression.
  • The campus a student walks, drawn in pixel art: library, bookshop, greenhouse, observatory, dormitory and a playing field set among paths and trees, with the student's own avatar standing on a path and their point total in the corner.
    The Academy campus waiting to be discovered.
  • A quest opening over the campus map. A title card reads “A Cat Into the Woods, Episode 1”, and a bar across the top carries the assignment it belongs to — “Session 1: Who We Are & Why We're Here” — with a link to open it.
    Launch assignments with story episodes.
  • The Halls of Progress: each student's progress drawn as a stained-glass window with four coloured lancets, one for each thing their teacher rewards. Their avatar stands beneath their own window with their name and point total, and a rose window is lit above whoever earned most this week.
    Students can walk the Halls of Progress to see their progress and their classmates avatars.
  • Mousifer's Bookshop. The shopkeeper, a small purple creature, says he rearranged the shelves twice this morning. Furniture and curios sit on wooden shelves priced in points, with tabs for companions, the back room, and things the student already owns.
    Mousifer's shop. The stock rotates, so there is always something to save for.
  • A student's own dorm room: a window, a mirror, a beanbag being resized, and two animal companions on the floor. A storage chest along the bottom holds things they have bought but not yet placed.
    Dorm room of their own, furnished by with what they've earned.
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  • The Halls of Progress Where the class sees itself. Every avatar in one room, and progress on show for anyone who wants it seen.
  • The Bookshop Mousifer's counter. Points buy things, and the stock rotates, so there's always something worth saving for.
  • The Dormitory A room of their own, furnished by effort. Everything they've earned is in it, down to the mastery milestones.
  • The Mailroom What arrived while they were away. Every point you awarded, waiting to be opened.
  • The Library Where the Founding is remembered, and the four lost Founders are still missing.

Custodian

Routines and regular practice occur in dedicated buildings on campus that create both a fun, story-full environment and a space for specific expectations during that time.

Major plot events launch students into summative projects or exams where the preparation they've done thus far comes into play as they face threats to the Academy and seek the four lost Founders.

With My Pixel Academy, the content comes from the teacher, who knows their stuff best.

The environment, narrative, and digital assets to grab just a little more student attention — well, that's our job, for now.

And whenever you're ready to start spinning your own scenarios for kids — or with them — we'll help you do that, too.

Custodian says, in four parts:

Routines and regular practice occur in dedicated buildings on campus that create both a fun, story-full environment and a space for specific expectations during that time.

Major plot events launch students into summative projects or exams where the preparation they've done thus far comes into play as they face threats to the Academy and seek the four lost Founders.

With My Pixel Academy, the content comes from the teacher, who knows their stuff best.

The environment, narrative, and digital assets to grab just a little more student attention — well, that's our job, for now.

And whenever you're ready to start spinning your own scenarios for kids — or with them — we'll help you do that, too.

What teachers get

Built to save you time

Set up in a few minutes. Nothing to install, nothing to migrate, nothing to buy.

  • Get your class in Import a roster, or share a class code. The same two minutes as any other platform you've set up.
  • Reward it as you see it Award points in the moment, or catch up in bulk afterward. Tune the shop economy so what you hand out matches what things cost.
  • Badges from your syllabus Create Mastery Badges for major objectives. Or upload the syllabus where you already did that planning, and start from its suggestions.
  • Assignments you already posted Syncs with Google Classroom. Import the assignments you already posted, and attach a point value or a story to any of them.
  • Stories, ready-made or your own Our writing team is building stories across grade bands and subjects. Or open the Studio, where the Story Engine turns your own text into animated scenes without asking you to write code or draw anything.
  • The Students screen: every student in the period with their points, quests and badges, a class code to share, and a side panel for giving or taking points from one student with a note they will read.
    Manage your roster.
  • The Rewards screen: hand points to named students or the whole class, with an optional reason the student reads, a log of what was given today, and the teacher's own list of point categories — PBIS or otherwise — each with a running count of how often it has been given.
    Choose your class values and award points for them.
  • The Badges screen, where Mastery Badges are created for major learning objectives.
    Create Mastery Badges for your content milestones, and students will strive toward them.
  • The Assignments screen, listing what the class is working on and where each assignment lives on campus.
    Import and manage your assignments.
  • The Story Library: ready-made story arcs written for the platform, each with a summary and an episode count, to attach to an assignment.
    Choose quests from the Story Library to launch your students into learning on your own assignments.
  • The Studio: the teacher's own stories in progress, and the first of eight story shapes drawn from the folktale canon — The Errand, The Stranger, The Gate — each arriving with its beats already written.
    ...Or write your very own quests for your kids, with as much help as you choose, and watch them come to life.
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Accessibility

Built for every student

The same shelf of comforts is there for everyone: read-aloud, reduced motion, friendlier letterforms, larger text, a quieter Academy, and a way to keep their own progress private.

Each one is the student's own to switch on, whenever they like. And the shelf keeps growing. We work with teachers to make sure it fits the students actually in front of them.

The Custodian's Shelf, a panel of six student-controlled settings: Read to me, Calm the motion, Friendly letters, Word size, Quiet the Academy, and Just my window.
The Custodian's Shelf, as a student finds it.

Who's building it

Teacher-built, tested in real classrooms

Grant Schatzman, founder of My Pixel Academy

Hello there! My name is Grant Schatzman, and I'm an educator, writer, and technology specialist based in Philadelphia. My Pixel Academy was a dream I first conceived of while teaching in Philadelphia public schools, where there was never enough time in the day to create the kinds of learning experiences I knew my students deserved.

Since 2024, I've been designing, testing, and refining My Pixel Academy in my own online teaching practice, all while building toward a platform that teachers everywhere can use. Now, with a team of brilliant writers, developers, and designers, we're on our way.

Meet the team

  • Mr. Grant's teaching style keeps things interesting and fun, so my child really enjoys going to class. Since starting classes, [she] has become a more confident writer and reader. She writes with more detail and reads longer books on her own now.

    Parent of a 2nd-grade student

  • Mr. Grant is amazing for my kid. He makes reading very attractive for my son and makes the learning feel different. [My son] has improved significantly. In the beginning, he was only able to fill in blanks for writing. Now he can mostly just write on his own with a 5-paragraph essay.

    Parent of a 2nd-grade student

  • My favorite part of class this year was writing the stories and the Home Zone stuff. Every time I come to class, I feel excited for a lot of things.

    Student, 4th grade

  • DON'T, WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT FORGET TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK PROPERLY!!!!!!!!!!

    Student, 5th grade, after a midterm Library Battle

  • If you work as a team instead alone than you will be successful: teamwork makes the dream work!

    Student, 5th grade, after a midterm Library Battle

Get started

Try it with your class

It's free and it runs on whatever's already in the room. Your grades stay where they are. Bring the curriculum you already teach; the Academy takes it from there.

Building, advising or backing? A technical cofounder, an advisory board and the first fully hosted version are all still ahead. The real goal is getting this into the hands of teachers in contexts very different from one Philadelphia classroom.

Direct: gkschatzman@alumni.upenn.edu